The tenth annual production of the Twin Living Christmas Trees at Jefferson Baptist Church here started the Christmas season glowing inside me.
BATON ROUGE – The tenth annual production of the Twin Living Christmas
Trees at Jefferson Baptist Church here started the Christmas season
glowing inside me.
I attended Dec. 2 the second of eight performances and was enchanted
throughout. The Victorian New England set and its special effects, the
believable plot with its natural presentation of the gospel, the
characters – including dancing bears and a regiment of wooden soldiers
doing close order drills – and the music, all thrilled my soul.
The traditional music took me back to the wonder of childhood Christmas. A blessing to me!
The 30-person full orchestra flawlessly supported the choir’s
renditions of what for the most part were Christmas ‘standards’ – from
Deck the Halls to Come On, Ring Those Bells to the Hallelujah Chorus
and more, which transported me back to “those innocent days of
yesteryear,” when Christmas was a wonder to behold, rather than the
stress-filled season it can become for harried adults.
I was in Baton Rouge for the Turning Hearts tour – read about it in the
Dec. 29 issue of the Message – and read in a newspaper that the tenth
annual Twin Living Christmas Trees was being staged that evening. Tenth
annual sounded like news to me, so I stayed over to hear it and to
participate in the worship service Sunday at Fellowship Church in
Prairieville – read about it in the Dec. 21 issue of the Message.
It won’t be the usual practice for the Message to review productions,
but my heart got involved with this one, and since it was the tenth
annual, I thought it would be permissible to write a review rather than
a ‘just the facts’ news article.
What about your church’s production? We’ve given the entire center
spread of the paper, pages 6 and 7, over to a listing of the Christmas
community outreaches taking place across the state that have been
brought to our attention as of press time. But back to the review ….
Each year the Twin Christmas Trees is a fresh production, with new
script, characters, music and set; the trees stay the same, but that’s
all, said Stage Manager Andi Sharp.
“It’s a challenge to coordinate with everybody – we’re all volunteers –
and to make the time in our schedules for it, but we enjoy it; it’s
worth it,” Sharp said. “Watching the faces of people when they walk out
makes it all worth while.”
Ken Alexander and Melanie Wales developed the script again this year,
Sharp said. Alexander also directed the drama; Alan Shoumaker
directed/conducted the music.
Korey Wales carried the role of Banker James Alexander with aplomb. We
felt his arrogance and authoritarianism early on and saw him crumple at
the thought he might lose his only daughter, the sparkling Sarah –
performed by Torie Stewart – to a sledding accident, the same way he’d
lost his sister, years before.
It was the first accident that hardened him; the second broke him.
Words his pastor – warmly performed by Ken Alexander – had been telling
him for years finally seeped through to his heart and by the end of the
evening he was a changed man, doubly blessed because Sarah recovered.
(I can tell you this because the final performance was Dec. 10.)
Individual scenes stand out in my mind – the children’s nativity, with
a precious golden angel, and a serene Mary holding her baby Jesus [a
doll] with just the right amount of protection; the adult nativity,
with a “real, live” Jesus. I’d never seen that before; never been in a
church large enough to have the right kind of [quiet] baby, and
Jefferson had two named in the program: Jenna Lee and Brooks Wilson.
That scene made fresh in my mind the fact that Jesus the Christ, my
Lord and Savior, was born into this world as a precious infant.
Then came the wise men, the last of which was so tall the train of his
garment stretched across half the stage. That wise men came in awe to
see this tiny baby – the Christmas message again struck home in a fresh
way, even as I was reminded of the current-day saying, ‘Wise men still
seek Him.’
Mention must be made of the wooden soldiers, who impressively executed
a series of close-order drills. I had a perfect seat for all this, in
the top row of the balcony.
And let me at least mention the ‘fun’ parts of the production: the
dancing bears and even a horse, a prince, ballerina, Frosty and elves
for youngsters, and a variety of townspeople for the adults, including
a friendly policeman and two women unsuccessfully vying for the mayor’s
attention – a delightful bit of understory.
The production included about 400 volunteers, including a set design
crew who finished the day before the first performance, said Mike
White, set construction coordinator. Traffic coordinators somehow
managed to get vehicles off the campus with impressive ease.
“We do this as a ministry to you,” Pastor T.C. French, Jr. said in his
remarks to the audience. Later he said to the Message, “We’re
celebrating that God has let us do it for 10 years.”